http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/

such as:

A “Lovely Moment” With the Title in the MBA Classroom
http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/04/a_lovely_moment.html

and C. Kristina Gunsalus’s “The College Administrator’s Survival Guide”

&pVia Pure Pedantry, I’ve become aware of a post that resonates over here, given the recent series of posts I did about a certain comic who, unable to dispute the science behind global warming or the health hazards of secondhand……

Not true. The exceptions are genetics and particle physics, and perhaps a few others. Most papers in Nature and Science are just a couple of authors. Chemistry (JACS especially), physics (Phys. Rev. Lett., etc.), and even most biology papers are generally jsut a few authors. And I see a trend today of making minor contributors into co-authors who would have merely been mentioned in the acknowledgements in past years.

Economics is a holdout. It’s rare to see an economics article with more than 3 authors–is that because econ is rarely experimental?

Also, I have found that some famous and busy researchers are also very good teachers. The two aren’t always contradictory.

Research is, at least to some extent, different. If you write an essay and it is published in a flagship journal and is then quoted widely, well, at least for the time being, your research has proved itself. If you publish a book with a top tier press, then it, too, has proved itself. (Perhaps it has proved itself “topical” or fitting in with current thinking, but it still has reached a certain level of appreciation that requires some thought and work; peers respect it by the standards of the time.) Of course, the criticism that is around fifty years later is another test – but, again, that isn’t one we are likely to appreciate in our lifetimes.

As long as that is the deal everybody signed up for, and it is a private institution, I don’t think it is against anything the blog stands for.

I wonder how much of the anger that some academics feel toward American society in general is to some extent a displacement of resentment toward university administrators and more senion peers? It’s probably much safer to express resentment against George Bush than against the dean and the world-famous researcher who rarely does any teaching.

If this hypothesis has any validity, then it would also predict that the academics who tend to be most resentful are precisely those who are in most contact with students.

Our school values it, but it is a backwater: we’re a junior college, pay is based completely on longevity (which actually I like, I think it leads to a more collegial atmosphere but I realize that is pretty much against everything this blog stands for). And, much as I respect and like my dept. chair and dean, I suspect our teaching ability is to a large extent gauged on whether we keep grading on a curve (unlike many schools, we get called in if we give too many A’s & B’s) and how much of a nuisance we are. That is, we are liked a lot better if there are no grade complaints. And if we are willing to teach 6 classes when they can’t get anyone else to teach one.